


as a sapphire is to a curse, a man is to a ghost

by Ashling



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief, Mourning, Poetry, Sestina, literally nobody has ever asked for a sestina to be written about anything ever and yet Here I Am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-24 00:52:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13799928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: If it would help, he would beg for grace from the inexorable and pitiless grey that slides across the city when the day goes dead. He did try it, rosary and all, one desperate night, but even with the beads in his hands, he knew this war would not be ended by time or treaty.A sestina.





	as a sapphire is to a curse, a man is to a ghost

At a memorable campfire long ago, Polly said the dead  
walked the depths of the forest this time of night  
and looked for the ones they left behind, restless  
not for love but for the unfinished. Years later, her grey  
grief insisted on it. They nearly had a war  
over whether or not a seance held any grace.

Now he thinks that the closest thing to God’s grace  
is that under the weight of the earth, the dead stay dead.  
He has dreamed otherwise. After the war  
on many a wild and torrential night,  
the thunder raised from his mind thousands of grey  
corpses and sent them into the world, roaming restless.

Those armies have been replaced. Now making him restless  
is a single form. If it would help, he would beg for grace  
from the inexorable and pitiless grey  
that slides across the city when the day goes dead.  
He did try it, rosary and all, one desperate night,  
but even with the beads in his hands, he knew this war

would not be ended by time or treaty. He longs for the war  
that let him take up a shovel and turn his restless  
hands to a trench that would withstand the night.  
He longs for its mortality. What a grace  
to see clearly an enemy struck down dead  
and to think it a step to Armistice. A grey

fog would be an easier fight than this. A grey  
horse, however, fleet, can’t outride this war.  
He would know. He’s tried. At last the dead  
darkness lifts, and he may take his restless  
feet to the nursery and receive his only true grace:  
two small arms round his neck, an end to the night.

Yet no brief tenderness can fend off the next night  
and though he ignores the clock as he works, the grey  
shadows always lengthen. A false grace  
comes in the form of as many little wars  
as he can tend to. When he tastes blood, the restless  
clock stops. He remembers when he’s almost dead.

Each unbearable night, he rejoins his solitary war.  
When black fades to grey, he is still restless,  
time is still endless, Grace is still dead.


End file.
